Category: Blues

I wrote this for Randy’s site for a series he is having called “Herstory.” Here is the criteria: 

We have laid out three criteria to focus on women in music. Each article will include one or more of these.

Songs written by men but sung by a woman with a female POV.

Songs written by a woman and sung by themselves or for/with another woman

Collaborative efforts. Written with input from both a woman and a man but sung by a woman.

First of all, I’m honored to be part of this and to be asked by Randy. Thank you for posting this last week.  My posts are usually personal, and this one won’t be any different, unfortunately. It’s the only way I know how to write. I could never be a critic because I’m too much of a fan.

When Janis Joplin recorded this song, it wasn’t meant to be the centerpiece of the album. The song, written by Kris Kristofferson, had already been around the country and folk circuits, covered by Roger Miller and others. Joplin cut her version in 1970 during sessions for Pearl, not long before her death. She injected life into this song. The lyric about losing love and finding freedom sounded like something she had lived rather than learned.

Me and Bobby McGee quickly became Joplin’s signature song. This was a slightly different vocal for Janis. There is more control in her voice in this one. The producer Paul A. Rothchild was working with Janis to use her voice more efficiently so she could continue to sing later on in her career. Unfortunately, she never got a chance.

The Full Tilt Boogie Band keeps it simple behind her, soft rhythm, light piano, no clutter. That space lets Joplin carry the whole thing. She starts gently, almost timidly (for her), then slowly lets her voice go. The dynamic is incredible to hear, and it never gets old. By the final verse, it feels less like singing and more like remembering. It’s the sound of someone in pain. You feel that pain with Janis; you ALWAYS felt pain with Janis.

Plenty of artists have covered this song. Janis Joplin lived it for just four minutes, but those 4 minutes have turned into 56 years and counting. Kristofferson wrote a strong song, but Joplin turned it into an epic masterpiece. It isn’t about the road, or even about Bobby. It’s about how freedom can feel empty when the person you shared it with is gone. That’s why her version stayed, and the others faded. Without knowing it, she put a claim on that song, and she owns it like no other ever will.

This was Janis Joplin’s only top ten hit, although her songs are still played today. This was released after Joplin passed away. Her death gave the album a lot of attention, and Pearl went to #1 on the Billboard Album Chart in 1971. It was the second song to hit #1 in the US after the artist had died. Dock Of The Bay by Otis Redding was the first. Janis idolized Otis, so she would probably have liked that.

Kris Kristofferson: “I had just gone to work for Combine Music. Fred Foster, the owner, called me and said, ‘I’ve got a title for you: ‘Me and Bobbie McKee,’ and I thought he said ‘McGee.’ I thought there was no way I could ever write that, and it took me months hiding from him because I can’t write on assignment. But it must have stuck in the back of my head. One day I was driving between Morgan City and New Orleans. It was raining and the windshield wipers were going. I took an old experience with another girl in another country. I had it finished by the time I got to Nashville.” 

“For some reason, I thought of La Strada, this Fellini film, and a scene where Anthony Quinn is going around on this motorcycle and Giulietta Masina is the feeble-minded girl with him, playing the trombone. He got to the point where he couldn’t put up with her anymore and left her by the side of the road while she was sleeping. Later in the film, he sees this woman hanging out the wash and singing the melody that the girl used to play on the trombone. He asks, ‘Where did you hear that song?’ And she tells him it was this little girl who had showed up in town and nobody knew where she was from, and later she died. That night, Quinn goes to a bar and gets in a fight. He’s drunk and ends up howling at the stars on the beach. To me, that was the feeling at the end of ‘Bobby McGee.’ The two-edged sword that freedom is. He was free when he left the girl, but it destroyed him. That’s where the line ‘Freedom’s just another name for nothing left to lose’ came from.

“The first time I heard Janis Joplin’s version was right after she died. Paul Rothchild, her producer, asked me to stop by his office and listen to this thing she had cut. Afterwards, I walked all over L.A., just in tears. I couldn’t listen to the song without really breaking up. So when I came back to Nashville, I went into the Combine [Publishing] building late at night, and I played it over and over again, so I could get used to it without breaking up. [Songwriter and keyboardist] Donnie Fritts came over and listened with me, and we wrote a song together that night about Janis, called ‘Epitaph’.